Isn't it a cruel irony that those who are most vulnerable and who have felt distinctly powerless in life, are most likely to end up in long term therapy, which in turn is often a profoundly disempowering experience?

"Far from helping them [patients] to overcome infantile problems, the analyst resubmerges them in an infantile relationship in which it is the analyst who emerges as all-powerful." -Jeffrey Masson

True for me. With my last T, there was initially a subtle power asymmetry of which I was largely unaware. But by the end her power was absolute. And I was powerless like never before. She won, I lost. Her gratifying triumph was my bitter defeat. Shouldn't she have paid me (he asked rhetorically)?